


Three forms of Love

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Series: Forms of Love [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Courtship, Cultural Differences, F/F, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Requited Love, Royalty, Unrequited Love, Women Being Awesome, mulan raising aurora's child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 17:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2200194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Zelena had said that if they did not obey her, if they betrayed her, she would kill their child. </p><p>But there is no force in this or any other realm greater than love-</p><p>And Mulan finds him first.'</p><p>In which Mulan goes to extraordinary lengths to protect Aurora's child and falls in love along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three forms of Love

**Author's Note:**

> I still haven't seen the last episode of the most recent season. Elsa and Anna are based on Frozen alone. Please don't spoil me!
> 
> Also I don't speak Icelandic. Sorry.

Zelena had said that if they did not obey her, if they betrayed her, she would kill their child.

 

The instant Aurora tells Snow, Zelena knows.

 

In a moment her hand is on her broom and in a handful more she swoops into her sister’s castle. With a flick of her wrist Aurora and Philip are just two more animals for her menagerie.

 

And yes, she tarries a while to taunt Snow White (whose parents will never have met) and Regina (who will never be conceived). She does not stay for long, she has a promise to make good on, a child to find.

 

But there is no force in this or any other realm greater than love-

 

And Mulan finds him first.

 

-

 

He’s his father’s eyes, his father’s hair and his mother’s way of sticking out her chin and standing stubborn and firm. He is not an easy boy to hide.

 

And she is aware that she is woefully ill prepared to care for a child so young. But he does not cry so often if she holds him close.

 

For weeks they are as invisible in the forest as a Wraith in shadows. And the Witch searches-

 

Zelena sends her monkeys after them and Mulan runs. She dare not fight them, if she injured one, if she killed it she could spend an eternity fearing it was Aurora. So she runs until the Curse rolls over the world again in a thick green cloud and sweeps the Witch away.

 

-

 

The Cursed mist blows away one day, as sudden and senseless as it came.

 

Aurora does not return and neither does Philip. Mulan does not know if this is because they are trapped by the Curse in another land or if two animals fell, unknown and unnoticed, among all Zelena’s pets.

 

What she does know is that Robin Locksley has not returned either and her own home is a world away. That the Wicked Witch may have been defeated as the Curse broke, or she may not have been. That Zelena may be trapped, or she might return.

 

That the boy is too young to take his throne and will never be suited for it if he is raised by a lone warrior in the woods.

 

That she loves Aurora and so the boy must thrive. He must grow in a court where he will learn state-craft as well as swordsmanship and it must be one where he would be safe even if the Witch should return.

 

And so she heads north to Arendelle.

 

-

 

Queen Elsa is much like her country, remote, cold and almost bitterly beautiful. Her people fear her but they love her far more. They call her _Idisi_. It is not a word Mulan knows and it is far from the strangest thing about the north.

 

She is required, even as a southerner selling her sword, to kneel before the Queen and swear loyalty.

 

She thinks of Aurora and feels for a moment that she can’t. Not in honesty-

 

But it is what the boy needs and he is Aurora’s and so-

 

Mulan swears her loyalty to the Queen of Arendelle.

 

-

 

She does not mean to draw attention to herself. She is merely a guard now. A guard who came out of the South with a child that was not her own.

 

She merely does her duty.

 

She does not mean to look extraordinary.

 

They call her _Skjaldmaer_. Shield….girl? Shielded woman? She is not precisely sure.

 

And it is nonsense for Mulan does not carry a shield.

 

-

 

She tries to spend as much time with the boy as she can and slowly he blossoms.

 

Perhaps it is the stability. Perhaps it is merely being around other children again.

 

She loves him, how could she not when he is so much his mother’s son?

 

As he grows she teaches him all she can. Swordsmanship, riding, to tell good armour from bad, to make a bow and hit a moving target from a horse’s back-

 

His mother and father.

 

She tells him about them, as best she can. Words are not Mulan’s weapon.

 

He does not share her lessons on his parents but once or twice (with cause, always with cause) he shows that he can fight like a demon. Mulan thinks that he may have been able to without her training; he has his mother’s steel.

 

They call him _felian,_ wolf-cub, and she wonders which of his parents was the wolf.

 

-

 

She rises steadily through the court and it is…unexpected. She has marched alone, fought alone for so long that she had forgotten excellence could lead to strange rewards.

 

For a time they have her guard the Queen, which is a pointless task but apparently a great honour.

 

Mulan has impressed someone.

 

She fears she knows who.

 

-

 

One night the Queen dismisses every guard but Mulan from her blue, crystalline room. She pours out a golden akaviti into glasses she weaves from ice. With grace and a certain hesitation she passes one to Mulan.

 

Their hands do not touch and Mulan senses that this important somehow, that the Queen is reluctant to so much as brush another-

 

She does not pause to wonder why she took the glass when as a rule she does not drink wine and the northerners drink harsher stuff still-

 

The Queen asks her, asks, that she tell her story. And Mulan tells it, although she has no doubt that the Queen has heard before that she joined her people’s army, that she fought beasts and ogres and vanquished Wraiths. That she travelled north with a child to save him from a Witch and his parent’s fate.

 

The Queen is not the first to ask who his parents were, but she is the first to turn, study Mulan’s face and ask what the boy’s parents were to _her_ -

 

And it has been years but Mulan can still not bring herself to say ‘love’-

 

She says instead that she cared for his mother and the Queen-

 

The Queen says softly that she cares for her sister and bids Mulan go with the Lady Anna on her journey south.

 

-

 

Princess Anna is summer to the Queen’s winter, she is full of laughter and seems to believe still that life is a wonderous adventure. She seems a woman who has never had a broken heart.

 

And Arendelle loves her. How could it not? When she is young, joyful, generous and a hundred other beautiful things besides.

 

They call her _freyja,_ Lady, and it is easy to see why. Princess Anna is the kind of noblewoman who pleases everyone she meets.

 

And once, before she saw Aurora, Mulan might have been in danger of falling in love with her. Once, when the boy was still unsteady on his feet, Mulan would have been wounded by Aurora’s memory every time she saw Anna’s sweet smiling face.

 

Now-

 

Something has eased.

 

-

 

Anna is not the innocent child she appears. She has apparently jilted at least one Prince of the Southern Isles.

 

Mulan is not sure of the details because the assassin is not talkative.

 

She kills him quickly and quietly. She does not think the Princess so much as notices her absence.

 

She pauses for a moment over the body. She wonders what an Arendelle _skjaldmaer_ would do-

 

She cuts a lock of the assassin’s hair and slips it in to the pouch at her belt before returning to Anna’s side.

 

By the time they return north Mulan’s little pouch is full of hair.

 

-

 

She empties it on the bed in the Queen’s room the night they return.

 

Anna’s smiles are quick, easy and pretty. Like daisies flowering in the spring.

 

Her sister’s are like a sunrise over the mountains, painting the snow and sky a thousand beautiful colours.

 

-

 

It will be years before Anna’s children, the Queen’s heirs, would benefit from lessons on diplomacy and politics. But fierce, dark little Felian is just the right age.

 

And for some reason the Queen hires tutors early.

 

-

 

There comes a time, perhaps a year later, perhaps less, when Mulan finally notices that her position has changed again. That gradually she has been required to spend more and more time by the Queen’s side. That while there are still tasks which warrant her sword more often the Queen wishes for her thoughts, her counsel, her opinion.

 

It must be her opinion the Queen seeks and if she looks to Mulan more often than any other, if it is Mulan that she sends on the Queen’s business when matters are most dire or personally important to the Queen then-

 

Mulan has not noticed.

 

-

 

She comes down sometimes, in felt robes rather than ice, to watch Felian train. To talk to them both.

 

She seems smaller without the ice, as though she is no longer the Queen but merely Elsa. It is a dangerous thing to think, to feel-

 

But when she is Elsa she allows her hand to brush Mulan’s and their fingers to curl together. And perhaps Mulan should be afraid of the Queen’s touch but-

 

There is no jolt, no shock at the touch of her skin. No sudden chill and curling frost. Her hands are not cold. And her fingers, which look so delicate, are strong and sure.

 

It makes Mulan’s heart stutter.

 

And it is still dangerous because Elsa is Queen-

 

-

 

When they drink akaviti now their hands meet on the stem of the glasses Elsa weaves.

 

They stand just slightly too close.

 

And it doesn’t matter that Mulan has learnt since Aurora, that she knows falling in love with royalty is a dangerous thing. Inch by inch she is falling anyway.

 

-

 

One night she steps closer still and their lips meet, quite naturally.

 

Elsa, like the akaviti, tastes of fire and caraway.

 

Her robes melt away at Mulan’s touch, merging in to the frozen floor.

 

And yes Mulan has dreamt of this, of Elsa’s soft, pink skin. Of her pale, almost white hair, loose and dishevelled. But it doesn’t play out the way it has in her dreams.

 

It is Mulan who yields. Mulan who whimpers and pleads. Mulan who finds herself spent, exhausted and incoherent under her lover’s smile. And Elsa who smiles down.

 

-

 

The next morning she finds a fine feathery frost over her armour.

 

It does not melt and she can’t quite bring herself to scrub it away.

 

-

 

She can not help but see…this, all of it as a risk she should not be taking.

 

Whatever the Northerners say about her in hushed whispers she is not perfect. She is not some…ideal knight. She is just a woman, a mortal and sooner or later she will fail or upset the Queen as she has failed and upset so many before.

 

A dangerous thing when her position, her livelihood, depends on the Queen.

 

She would happily risk it all for Elsa’s smile.

 

But she loved Aurora once and Felian is half-grown.

 

Mulan can not think only of herself.

 

-

 

If Elsa was a man it would be simpler. She would merely have to wait for a ring.

 

If Mulan was a man there would be a difference in rank to consider, but it is not unknown for Queens to marry mercenaries when the mood strikes them.

 

Mulan knows that even thinking this is pointless; if either of them were men they would not love each other as they do. But she needs- She wishes-

 

She does not know whether the Queen feels as she does. She does not know what sign she should be watchful for.

 

And she does not know how to ask.

 

-

 

Doubt changes things.

 

She is hesitant where she was once sure. She pauses, she looks down and away often.

 

She thinks that Elsa notices, but they do not speak of it.

 

And if Mulan comes quicker when the Queen calls now, if she looks, searchingly, into Elsa’s eyes, if she whispers endearments the Queen will not understand-

 

She tells herself it does not mean her heart will break again.

 

-

 

The frost on her armour becomes less a pattern and more a second layer of steel.

 

Still Mulan can not bring herself to scrub it off.

 

-

 

It started slowly but now it seems she spends every night in the Queen’s room. In her bed.

 

The frozen room begins, gradually, to collect her things. She takes her armour, ice-coated, from the glass-like floor and wonders what she will do if this ends.

 

-

 

In the end it is Anna that reassures her, quite accidentally. She meets the Princess when she goes to take Felian from his tutors and-

 

Surely it can’t have been so long. Surely Anna’s eldest is not yet old enough-

 

And yet there they are, Anna and her daughter, taking their leave of the tutors.

 

They do not speak for long, the Princess is a busy woman. But she smiles to Mulan and calls her _magkona_ -

 

Sister-in-law.

 

It hits her like a blow and she feels that she can not breathe.

 

-

 

When they practice that day Felian strikes her a dozen times.

 

He tries to stop their sparring insisting she must be ill and is confused when she laughs.

 

-

 

She spends the night, curled around Elsa and feeling finally that she is secure.

 

And she wishes to say- To show-

 

But she can’t quite bring herself to. Not yet, perhaps not ever.

 

She wants to say ‘I love you’ and instead finds herself asking what _skjaldmaer_ means.

 

“A lady.” Elsa answers, sleep-slow. “A powerful woman.”

 

“I thought that was _Freyja_?”

 

“ _Freyja_ is a woman born to power.” Elsa tells her. “ _Skjaldmaer_ is one who fights for it.”

 

Mulan considers this, this and the way the little light in the room seems to soak in her lover’s hair.

 

“And _Idisi_?” She asks.

 

It is a while before Elsa replies as if she is thinking of something more weighty than a language lesson.

 

“ _Idisi_ is a woman who is power.”

 

-

 

Neither of them can say ‘I love you’ in three words.

 

Mulan says it with her surrender and her sword. She spells it in the kisses she leaves on Elsa’s neck and the wounds she leaves on the Queen’s mortal enemies.

 

With whispers of winter’s beauty in her mother tongue.

 

Elsa is not so consistent in her language. Mulan is not always sure-

 

She says it one day as they watch Felian spar with Anna’s daughter by telling Mulan mournfully that she can not give the boy her Arendelle.

 

Arendelle is promised to Anna’s daughter and wherever the Queen’s heart lies she can not give it to Mulan’s son.

 

Mulan smiles, squeezes her hand.

 

She understands what Elsa does not say and Felian has a Kingdom all his own.

 

-

 

Nineteen years after King Philip and Queen Aurora disappeared a boy rides down to their Kingdom from the North claiming to be their long lost heir.

 

He is the right age but he answers to ‘Felian’ rather than the name Aurora gave her boy.

 

He has Philip’s eyes and Philip’s hair, grown longer and wilder than the King ever allowed it to.

 

He has a necklace that belonged, once, to Queen Aurora.

 

He has Fa Mulan’s sword.

 

And, inexplicably, he has a letter from the Snow Queen of Arendelle swearing her love and allegiance to the Wolf King of the South.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The translation of 'Idisi/Ides' (a word common to Old English and Norse) is still debated. 
> 
> It definitely refers to a particular sort of woman. It is no indicator of her morality (both heroines and Grendel's mother are called Idisi in Beowulf) but it does seem to refer to a sort of power that isn't directly connected to rank. One of the going theories is that it indicates unusually high magical power. 
> 
> Freyja is a high born lady. Skjaldmaer, a shield maiden, is a term for women who fought physically.


End file.
